Aside from the sudden appearance of anonymous postings to the comments section of my blog from someone spouting Conservative talking points, I was almost floored to see Norm Doyle on NTV this evening and read Loyola's comments in the Telly. Things must be getting hot for the Reformatories if they are sending what looks to me like their paid staff onto blogs in order to spread what is really nothing more than piffle.
On NTV, Norm kept repeating a call for Liberals to promise the offshore money is safe is the Liberals are re-elected. He seemed to lose focus at one point and just kept rambling on and on.
Let me put it this way: Liberals will be voting for the deal their prime minister signed whether the thing is in bill C-43, a stand alone bill or delivered baked in a pizza and written in mandarin Chinese.
The Liberal commitment on this point is clear. Except for desperate Connie partisans flailing around for excuses, the main issue is what the two Conservative members of parliament will do when the real vote comes on the offshore money.
Remember that the vote the Liberals sided with before was just a hollow partisan gesture by Doyle, Hearn and a few others. They picked province over party and PM and they never suffered a bit.
This time it matters, Norm and Loyola. That's why everyone expects you to stand up and state what you plan to do rather than weasel around as you have been doing.
So which way are you going to vote, Norm: Party or Province?
Meanwhile over in the Hearn bunker deep in the heart of Renews (not in the riding he nominally represents), the wannabe fish minister is spreading some nonsense of his own.
He is trying to pretend that the Connies were going to vote for the budget but can't do it now because of all the new spending. For further detail see the Telly story in today's edition on page A4.
Here are the facts - something Loyola has a historical problem with irrespective of the subject -
1. The Conservative Party has never indicated it would vote for the government's budget. Their initial objection was because of the bill's Kyoto provisions. They were removed and so then the Connies decided to object to the offshore money being included in what they called a "complex" piece of legislation.
Mr. Hearn's line of argument is nothing more than an effort to divert attention from the truth.
2. The reason Messrs Doyle and Hearn are nervous is because their party is soft on the offshore deal.
- Their leader rejected the Williams proposal in his written reply to the Premier almost a year ago. Harper also promised to sell the federal Hibernia shares on the open market " for the benefit of all Canadians".
- No one has seen this recent letter from Harper so we don't know what it says. Apparently, the Premier is concerned about it to the point where he is willing to start again from the beginning to negotiate with a Harper government. So much for a done deal.
- Danny Williams has also said he would welcome re-opening the deal to make it better.
- Flip over to Andrew Coyne's website and you'll see the Connie view of the offshore deals reflected in some of the comments on the site from Coyne readers.
3. Danny Williams now considers voting against the offshore money to be "not in the best interests of the province."
A few short months ago, Loyola was praising Danny. Today's Telly has the premier making a stark, negative comment on Hearn's intentions. All is not well in the Connie camp.
To switch back to my own interpretation, I'll toss this on the table. Hearn is going to have a hard time getting workers in the next federal election. It was bad enough that traditional Tory supporters abandoned him to work for Norm Doyle last time.
The Osborne machine deserted him because of some serious disagreements on policy - like the death penalty and Hearn's role in the shotgun wedding with the Reformers.
Added to all that will be Hearn's turning his back on Newfoundland and Labrador. How can any provincial Tory work for Doyle or Hearn in this instance when they plan to put Stephen Harper ahead of their province's interests?
Loyola remembers very well that he only won St. John's South Mount Pearl by a mere 4.5% last time over political newcomer Siobhan Coady. Slightly less than 40% of the electorate supported the Renews-based Hearn. Coady polled 35% and the New Democrats' Peg Norman polled 24%.
Loyola ducked every possible opportunity to debate his opponents and was decidedly miserable and ungracious in his victory. That didn't win him any new friends.
Peg may not run again and in a stark contest between the Connies candidate Hearn, backed by the likes of Stockwell "Culture of Life" Day and Peter MacKay, DDS, I would lay odds on NDP supporters holding their noses and voting Liberal just to keep the Reformatories from taking power.
Add to that the spectre of a country run by a majority federal party with no or almost no support in one of the country's most populous provinces.
Gomery and the $100 million pilfered by what most Canadians consider a bunch of bad apples will rapidly drift off the minds of most Canadians when they start to consider which party would make the best government for the country.